Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1997, Pages 73-74
Diplomatic Doings
EGYPTIAN FOREIGN MINISTER Amr Moussa told an audience at Georgetown University Sept. 29 that Egypt is still a committed partner in the Arab-Israeli peace process and that his country will work hard with the United States to keep negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians on track.
“I don’t need to stress to this audience the challenge facing the Middle East as we near the millennium,” Moussa said. “The Israelis and the Palestinians have a right to live in prosperity and security....At the end of the day, the Israelis and the Palestinians will have to come to a sense of the issues if they are going to live side by side.”
Moussa, who was at Georgetown to receive the School of Foreign Service’s 16th annual Jit Trainor Award for Distinction in the Conduct of Diplomacy, said the greatest obstacle to peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors were “unilateral actions,” and that the only basis for lasting peace and security is an Israeli withdrawal from land it occupied during the 1967 War and self-determination for the Palestinians.
The foreign minister singled out continued new and expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as being the biggest single obstacle to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and said that both parties should stick to the terms of the agreements they signed in Oslo.
That also means negotiations “in good faith” on the status of Jerusalem, which Israelis and Palestinians both claim as their capital and which Israel annexed in the aftermath of the 1967 War. Over the last year, Israeli settlements in Arab portions of the city have increased tensions with the Palestinians.
“The non-implementation of signed agreements are attempts to flaunt the rules of the game,” Moussa said. “Time should not be wasted in attempts to rediscover the ABC’s of the peace process. It already has a sound foundation.”
Citing his country’s abandoned nuclear weapons program, Moussa said that any comprehensive Middle East peace must create a region free of weapons of mass destruction. All of the nations in the region should put their nuclear, biological and chemical weapons under international control in order to ensure regional stability and security.
“There can be no exceptions. There is no room for a future of arsenals,” Moussa said.
Thanks to the recent liberalization of the country’s economy, Moussa said he could foresee a day when American aid to Egypt would no longer be necessary. Economic growth has improved considerably since Egypt began unleashing its private sector, and Moussa said the Egyptian government would continue to target more investment to the private sector and shift government spending away from universal social service programs targeted at “the truly needy.”
When asked about the continuing U.N. sanctions against Iraq and a recent statement by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that the sanctions were “a good policy,” Moussa said the sanctions shouldn’t be eternal, and that eventually Iraq will have to be brought back into the community of nations.
“The issue of sanctions itself is under much consideration...Has it achieved results? Should the people pay the price?” Moussa asked. “Our position is that Iraq has been punished [for invading Kuwait], and we [the international community] should help the population get out of the impasse.”
—Charles Featherstone
